Center for Covid control told workers to lie about results, ex-employees say | Hacker News Reader

Center for Covid control told workers to lie about results, ex-employees say

blockclubchicago.org

56 pointsta98819 comments

This Syed guy seems like a real piece of work. Read the end of the article. I wish it was unbelievable. Sadly, following the standard entrepreneurial grift formula: 1. Take the money. 2. Fake the work. 3. Scale to the point where you can’t even fake the work. 4. When you’re accused of wrongdoing, deny. 5. When there’s evidence, double-deny. 6. When you’re under investigation, circle the wagons and say “we take X seriously and are committed to blah blah blah”. 7. Get a slap on the wrist. 8. Parachute away with your $millions and start again with a new scam.

He’d fit right in with Elizabeth Holmes and Adam Neumann.

I have doubt that strategy works here. This is red meat for all at the table.

I'm not sure how it's in USA, but at least where I'm from, faking medical results goes beyond merely providing shitty service (where you'd have a civil case to recoup losses and pay penalties) straight into a felony. In any case, some of the acts described are straightforward felony fraud.

The article states that a lawsuit was filed against the company, but what I'm interested in is whether there's a criminal investigation against the management.

Quips like these are so easy to make, much easier than the job of the prosecutor who has to prove that this isn't just a bunch of incompetent "professional manager" types trying to run a business in a domain they don't have sufficient knowledge of.

How do you prove that they set out to fake tests instead of just running an MVP (heavy on the M) until someone who knew how to actually run things bought them out for their customer bast? Best case you'll get lucky be able to find some statute that lets you skip the "prove motive" part.

Subpoenas, surely. The number of startups that are engaged in this sort of grift and also manage to keep all of their planning and communications about a plan like this completely out of discoverable communication seems like it must be small.

You don't need to prove that they set out to mass fake tests. You take a single test report issued for any one of the cases where the samples were thrown out or their data faked. You look at the signature on that medical report (this is the key part at least where I live, but perhaps may not be the case in USA - you can't issue medical tests without a medic signing off on them, often that might be a laboratory head who's supervising the technicians and data entry people) who certifies the report's medical validity and that the process (medically proper process, not just the company procedures) was followed. And you charge that person, since they are personally responsible for this process and that single test was faked. The following investigation may reveal other complicit persons e.g. some managers, but you immediately have someone who is very likely to be personally liable (the exception would be if someone forged their signature, which is a separate felony). "I was just following orders" is not an excuse for signing off a fabricated medical report.

Quoting the article, "The manager “told me that I should enter the data and send the dead samples to the lab for testing anyways,” the former employee wrote. “She said that I should change the collection date on the samples to a more recent date so that it appeared like the samples could still deliver an accurate result.”" - right there you have a testimony for prosecution.

Many other acts described there would be consisted with "poor MVP" but they would result in company being unable to make the tests and thus lose money/customers. However, the point when the anyone decided to issue test reports anyway with faked data - that crosses the line to a crime.

For those who misread and get as confused as I did: this is “The Center for COVID Control”

> The company, a suburban Chicago-based chain that boasts 300 locations nationally, has been paid more than $124 million for testing from the federal government since the start of the pandemic.

So how much of our "news", response, reaction, mindset, policy, etc, etc was based on total bullshit?

I think we're still in the early days learning about all the falsified testing, falsified covid origins, covid lab manipulation, waning vaccination effectiveness, ineffective cloth masks, etc.

From the article ...

"Many customers also called questioning why they got a negative result from Doctors Clinical Lab but had tested positive through another lab, Morales said."

"Numerous Chicagoans told Block Club they received negative test results from Doctors Clinical Lab, only to get a positive elsewhere. Others never received results, or received them so late the test was effectively useless. Some people who didn’t even test at the sites were still sent results."

It appears you're saying that the response was because there were many false positive tests, when it appears to have been the opposite.

A negative test allows people to attend events, cross international boundaries, etc, etc because a negative test is treated as definitive. False negatives would have allowed the virus to spread.

> It appears you're saying that the response was because there were many false positive tests, when it appears to have been the opposite.

I said "falsified testing," you added words and then claimed I was wrong while not understanding that test results - both positive and negative - influence and shape policy decisions at all levels, public and private.

I think you tripped over a mental shortcut where the huge majority of people who are making claims adjacent to "the government is lying to us about covid" are claiming that covid actually isn't (or never was) as bad as people say it is. So the lazy read of your post is you saying that this story is further evidence of the government overreaction, even if that wasn't your intention.

Too bad the people who saw this 2 years ago was called conspiracy theorists.

It seems to me that at least 80% of the population just does what the TV tells them, as long as the people on there has nice titles and credibility.

Probably less than 1% look up the criminal history of the cdc, the who, fauci, big pharma and so on.

I'm just stating the obvious here but man, it's interesting to watch humanity act like ants following authority without any hesitation.

What's so hard about reading about these people?

If you're staying the obvious have you tried reading this obvious article?

The article is about completely different thing, some scammer providing fake results

There's one of these in my town that got scrutiny recently, and I believe they're currently shut down by the county. Reports started coming out of their Florida locations that people were getting "you're negative!" while still in line to take the tests.

This sort of thing is why I was pretty frustrated to hear the Biden admin talking about tests last week and basically saying "they're easy to find, just Google it".

Sounds like the typical dumpster fire that happens when a business not run by people who know how to scale up a business or have run one at that size get the kind of demand that requires scaling up that business.

Am I supposed to clutch my pearls or roll my eyes?

Just another example of the major grift which transpired as a result of the US federal gov't throwing money around because of the pandemic.

I remember someone at the beginning of this saying (although I forget the exact number they used) if we could shorten the duration of the pandemic by one day by spending $1 billion, that was worth it.

When this is all over and we can look at things with the advantage of hindsight, it might be interesting to see what the “worth it” number really was.

An organization that's told "here's fucktons of money, do something, yesterday" moving too quickly to seriously vet its suppliers?

I think "Am I supposed to clutch my pearls or roll my eyes?" applies to that one too.

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